


New Day

by sparxwrites



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Child Abuse, Gen, Guilt, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 07:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Milton household is not a happy one. A look inside the heads of Castiel, Gabriel, and Lucifer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Day

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings** for child abuse and thoughts of suicide. Please don't read if those topics are triggering or upsetting to you.
> 
> Vaguely inspired by [this](http://ask-wings-and-winchester.tumblr.com/image/40349905673).

It’s a new day.

-

Castiel wakes up. It’s nothing new, considering the regular night-terrors that have him jolting awake and choking on his own breath at various hours of the night, preventing him from sleeping in anything more than two or three hour stretches.

There’s light outside this time, though, so he doesn’t huddle deeper under the covers and curl himself tighter into a ball in an attempt to go to sleep. He wants to – it’s cold, despite the small nest of duvets and blankets and pillows he’s made for himself, scrounged from every corner of the house that he doesn’t think anyone will notice them missing from. They help him feel safe, help him feel like he has a barrier against the world that will protect him, even if they can’t quite manage to make him warm.

It’s a fallacy – one that will only last until Gabriel’s not there to protect him, or decides not to, until the shouting and the fighting doesn’t stop outside his bedroom door where he pretends it’s held at bay by the power of his nest – but one he clings to nonetheless, because he needs it, needs it like oxygen or food. It’s pathetic, but he can’t bring himself to care; after all, he’s a coward at heart.

Soon, Gabriel will be here, knocking on his door and telling him breakfast’s ready, with that smile in his voice that hides the creeping, gnawing pain that Castiel sometimes sees in the middle of his brother’s chest. The dark, jagged hole that he wants to press his fingers into, scoop out the muck and decay inside it, clean it until it’s pink and healthy and can heal… He wishes he could, but he doesn’t know how.

Soon, he’ll have to get up and face another day, face more  _people_ , struggle against the urge to crawl back into his nest and hide, where it’s safe. But soon is not the same as now – and for now, he’s safe.

-

Gabriel wakes up. He wishes he hadn’t; his ribs ache with every breath, and he can taste copper in his mouth, the inside of his cheek tender where he’d bitten it. He probes it slowly with his tongue, despite the pain, unwilling to move from the warmth and relative safety of his bed. But the sun’s rising outside, and it’s a Monday – he needs to get up, bind his ribs, get dressed, make breakfast for Cas, get to school, make it through the day…

Some days he wonders what would happen if he just didn’t get up. If he just pulled the covers up over his head, said, “Not today,” to the world and hid from it all.

Most days, he’d like to do that. He’s a coward at heart, he knows.

But there’s things to do, things that  _have_  to be done. Family to fight for, siblings to be protected, breakfast to be cooked, packed lunches to be organised. So he sits up, bites back a whimper as his side flares with pain, swings his feet out of bed and onto the warped, rough boards of his floor.

It’s not like bedsheets protect you from the world, anyway. Even if he hid, they’d still find him, still hurt him. Most likely, hurt him worse for trying to hide. He learnt, a long, long time ago, that there’s really no way to escape the pain – and, as he stumbles towards the bathroom and the medical kit, he knows nothing’s changed, no matter how he tries to pretend things are getting better, no matter how hard he tries to tell himself that it’s all going to be okay soon.

When he was younger, he used to dream of someone coming to save them. He’d watch the adverts on the tv, see the helpline numbers scrolling, think about picking up a phone and calling and begging the voice on the other end to come and save them, to get rid of the monsters and horrors that lurked in their house.

He knows now that that sort of thing only happens in fairy tales. He’s too old for fairy tales now, but he still dreams sometimes, when it’s quiet and still and there’s no one there to mock him for daring to think that things might one day be different.

It won’t be still for long – Castiel will get up, Lucifer will get up, the monsters and the horrors will return – but for now, it is. So he dreams.

-

Lucifer wakes up – as much as he ever does these days, with the drugs that run through his veins and eat him alive from the inside, dulling the world just enough to make it bearable. He lies there for a while, wondering whether to light up a joint now or wait until he’s had something to eat (because otherwise he won’t want anything to eat, and then it’ll be lunch time and too late). Thinking about the report at the bottom of his backpack,  _could try harder_  and  _highly disruptive_ , and wondering what happened to the days of straight A’s and his dreams of studying the stars. Wonders what the hell he’s going to do with his life, now.

In a few moments, Gabriel or Castiel will be at his door. Gabriel to offer him food he’ll refuse more often than not, Castiel to crawl into bed with him and tuck his head under his big brother’s chin and say nothing until Lucifer eventually whispers that it’s all going to be okay, little one, don’t you worry, which is a lie they both choose to believe. In a few moments, he’ll have to face another day.

He doesn’t want to face another day.

Most days, he thinks about going downstairs early in the morning, when no one else is awake, getting the old, heavy pistol from its home in the cupboard under the stairs. He could get bullets for it, easy, he knows; bullets are considerably more legal than a lot of the things he’s gotten his hands on over the years. He thinks about loading the pistol on the stairs in the dark, sliding the bullets in with shaking fingers, walking up the stairs to the room at the very top of it and blowing the brains out of his Father’s head as he sleeps in an alcohol-induced haze, before turning the gun on himself. He thinks that’d be the best use of his life, probably.

It’s the only way he gets through the day, most days, the drugs and the image of his Father’s brains spattered across the pillow, knowing his siblings were going to be safe once and for all before finally being able to escape it all.

He’d never do it, though. He’s a coward at heart, after all – too scared of leaving his siblings alone to face the world, too guilty about everything he’s not managed to do for them to abandon them now.

-

In the room at the top of the stairs, their Father still sleeps.

For now.

-

It’s a new day.


End file.
